[Newspoetry] Newspoetry Market Competition Report

[Scott Rettberg]

Per your request and agreement to pay my fee of one hundred poems, yes 
including all copyrights, in perpetuity, future and past tense, I submit the
following market espionage report to Mr. Joseph Futrelle (CEO) and Mr.
William Gillespie (Founder), as well the executive committee of the Board of
Directors of "Newspoetry.com" ­­ an Illinois concern, pre-incorporation.

Feasability: Newspoetry does not offer a feasible business model. No one
will pay for this shit. But, and I emphasize but, that bespeaks conventional
wisdom, which is often wrong. Tenacity and smart marketing can get you the
equivalent of a linguistic pet rock.

Reach: Newspoetry has global implications but does not yet reach a global
audience. I find it hard to believe that among your gang of militant
intellectuals no one speaks, for instance, Chinese, which is the
fastest-growing segment of Web consumers on the planet. Not to mention
Spanish. Go multilingual. Go there fast. Move faster than your competition.

Messaging: Newspoetry is no longer a poem a day until Y2K. But what is it?
How do you describe it? While combining "News" and "Poetry" has been to your
inestimable advantage, you no longer have a tagline with zip. Furthermore,
your message seems to be split. Are you political or are you silly? Are you
Anarchist or are you Liberal? Do you support free speech or would you prefer
that a meter apply?

Competition: You have heard all of the above from experts far more qualified
than I, whom you have rewarded with generous pre-IPO stock option packages
potentially far more valuable than the meat-and-potatoes fee of one hundred
poems which I require. You are paying me not for my considerable but not
inestimable marketing wisdom, but for my ability to peer in on your
competitors and report to you on your supremacy or slippage from an enviable
market position. Forthwith:

www.badpoetry.com

Badpoetry should be regarded as a serious threat to your market position.
They have a business model. They charge for a material good (greeting cards)
and they collect revenues on the same. Their Web design is not comparable to
the sophistication of Newspoetry, but they have offices in Mountain View,
California, a hotbed of Web Activity. I believe Netscape moved there after
Champaign rejected *it*. You may breathe a sigh of relief, however, as they
only have two writers. You have at least five, if not a dozen. There is
strength in numbers. They have, however, managed to cleverly get around the
problem of their writing being bad by advertising it as such. Clever
marketing. You people can learn from this.

www.goodpoetry.com

Goodpoetry sucks. It appears to be a project of Chicago Poetry, which, if
I'm not mistaken, dirtied its reputation by attempting to horn in on the
e-poets network and steal its and other literary domain names. It appears to
be little more than advertisement for live poetry events, and not very good
at that. Sample text:  "February is Love and Sex month./Let's hear your best
erotic / love poetry at the Chicago Poetry Venues". This is not a threat to
Newspoetry's market position.

www.oldpoetry.com

Oldpoetry is not yet taken. This represents a huge opportunity for an
enterprising poetry maven.

www.sexpoetry.com

Sexpoetry offers nothing in the way of poetry, which I would cite as a flaw
in its business model. It does, however, offer "Best dirty links" including
"Sex District USA," "Men's Cocks" (for gays/by gays), "Horny Housewives" (we
need company), "Twink Studies" (for gay men), "Pam Anderson" (shocking tape
exposed), "Girls Just Turned 18", "Huge Knocking Boobs" (they're bigger than
my head), "Japanese Bondage", "Spank Me" (I've been real bad),
"Cheerleaders", "Sweet Black Pussy" (dark chocolate lovin'), and "Girls
Doing Girls." Though the content appears to consist of links to pay-for-porn
sites (the particularly irritating kind with the windows that don't go
away), Newspoetry should consider Sexpoetry a serious threat to its market
position, as the Internet has demonstrated an insatiable lust for
pornography. Newspoetry should take under advisement my recommendation to
perhaps spice up its act just a bit in the face of this barbarous threat
from Sexpoetry.

www.eroticpoetry.com

Erotic poetry is available. A market opportunity for Newspoetry.

www.freepoetry.com

is an alias for Web Predator, a web design firm.

www.poetry.com

is a thriving corporate poetry site, featuring 2.4 million poets. They are
out of your market range and offer cash prizes daily as well as "the best
100 poems ever written." Are you even THINKING of trying to compete with
THAT?

www.news.com

news.com is owned by CNET, which covers technology. They've very little
headway into the poetry market.


www.lovepoetry.com

Lovepoetry is a beautiful site that you just can't help walking away from
feeling better about  the world. It is all we need. Because "when the
emotion is love, everyone is a poet." The quality of the work on
lovepoetry.com is undeniable. Who can forget the immortal, "where do the
angels come from ?/ they come from within your eyes/ soft cotton dreams--
kisses-/ blowing sweetly through/ the breeze." Lovepoetry runs ads for Chase
Visa/Mastercard. Where are the credit card banners for Newspoetry?

www.futrelle.com

This is the website of one Jacques Futrelle, an up and coming writer. One to
watch. You should consider an alliance.

www.gillespie.com

This site has Flash animation. Very fancy. But it takes approximately four
minutes to load on a standard 56K connection. Fear not the Flash site. The
HTML site is however quite powerful, offering  total contact branding,
history and philosophy, portfolio and case studies, direct response, general
marketing, public relatons, pharmaceutical marketing, magazine marketing,
magazine marketing, e-commerce, and last but not least, employment. A force
to be reckoned with or a bubbling sham? You tell me.

www.realpoetry.com

Realpoetry is perhaps the most serious threat to Newspoetry's market
predominance. Realpoetry is "every poets voice to the world." Just think
about that. While Newspoetry is working with a team of perhaps five, perhaps
ten, perhaps twenty, maybe even one hundred global newspoets, Realpoetry has
access to every single poet in the world. Act fast, Newspoets. The Realpoets
site is "just a beta" but just think about what all of those poets, yes all
of them, can do together in the face of the efforts of your ragtag band.
Shit. It just occurred to me that you are working with them. And they are
out of Seattle. Which is probably just code for Redmond. I throw up my
hands. I give up.


I will take my payment now. One hundred poems. All rights reserved.

Make your poetry more fecund, more virile, more real. More full of love,
sex, gillespie and futrelle. Keep it real, man. There lies the path to
riches. This is the best advice I can give you.


Yours,

themarketingconsultant.com




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